WAR IN UKRAINE: September 15, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy takes part in a national flag-raising ceremony in the recently retaken city of Izyum on September 14.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 204
President Volodymyr Zelensky has been to the recaptured city of Izyum, a key logistics hub in north-eastern Ukraine. During his visit, Mr Zelensky thanked troops who took part in the counter-attack against Russian occupiers. He oversaw a flag-raising ceremony and said the Ukrainian flag would return to every city and village in the country. Ukrainian officials say they are targeting towns in the eastern Donbas region after making a series of gains in a rapid counter-offensive - BBC
Residents in a southern Ukrainian city are being urged to evacuate because of a risk of flooding, after missiles hit a major reservoir dam. As many as 22 streets in two districts of Kryvyi Rih are affected, city head Oleksandr Vilkul warned on Wednesday. Officials said a water flow of 100 cubic metres per second was gushing from breaches, and water levels in the Inhulets river were rising dangerously. Ukraine said the strike was revenge by Russia for its recent counter-attack. President Volodymyr Zelensky described Russia as a "terrorist state" - BBC
The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General's Office has denied a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk that Russian teachers in territories liberated from Russian occupying troops had been detained. Meanwhile, Ukraine says it has for the first time encountered an Iranian-made suicide drone used by Russia on the battlefield - RFE/RL
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Ukrainians from all walks of life to take to the battlefield, among them Oleksandr Shapovalov, a prominent dancer and teacher who traded in his ballet shoes for a gun, and learned how to launch grenades. This week, the Kyiv-based National Opera of Ukraine said in a statement that Mr. Shapovalov, 47, a soloist with the National Opera, had died on Monday “under enemy mortar shelling,” the latest victim in a war that has upended Ukraine’s close-knit cultural community. The Ukrainian defense ministry, in a Twitter post, confirmed Mr. Shapovalov’s death. “He took up arms and became an ordinary soldier,” the ministry said. “The stars of the stage fade over time. Oleksandr’s star will shine eternally.” It was unclear where Mr. Shapovalov, who joined a volunteer army in April, had sustained his injuries; Ukrainian news outlets said he had died in a battle near Donetsk - NYT
Required reading…
Putin Has a New Opposition—and It’s Furious at Defeat in Ukraine
Right-wing nationalists are spreading a dangerous “stab-in-the-back” myth to explain Russia’s crushing defeats.
So it is not at all surprising that—as news of the haphazard retreat of Russian forces from the Kharkiv front pours in—we’re seeing ever more installments in the end-of-Putin literature. Foremost among them is a recent piece in the Atlantic by the acclaimed journalist and historian Anne Applebaum: “It’s Time to Prepare for a Ukrainian Victory.”
While the piece begins with a levelheaded and persuasive consideration of the scale of Ukrainian advances and the surprising lack of fight in the retreating Russians, it veers into the end-of-Putin genre by surmising that Russia’s lackluster performance on the battlefield will topple Putin, somehow. The problem here is the same as it is for every article in this literature: The absence of causal mechanisms—the whos, whys, and hows of revolution—is ignored in favor of handwaving and passive voice. A Ukrainian victory is certainly possible. But that alone won’t spell Putin’s end. After all, plenty of dictators, from Saddam Hussein after the Iran-Iraq conflict and the first Gulf War to Vladimir Lenin after Russia’s botched invasion of a newly independent Poland, have survived losing wars they started.
Read the full analysis by Alexey Kovalev here